


Fall Guys Tumble On The Cutting-Room Floor

by propergoffic



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game), Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines (Video Game)
Genre: An Excess of Faith in the Plot Structure of Life Is Strange, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Deleted Scenes, Fridged Women, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, Mildly Dubious Consent, Multi, Peril, Vampire Bites
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-22 19:46:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 11
Words: 17,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16604348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/propergoffic/pseuds/propergoffic
Summary: Deleted scenes from "A Sense Of Fatal Allegiance", including the original, orphaned plotline. Notes on a chapter by chapter basis. First "chapter" is an explanation of sorts, because I don't trust AO3's notes systems on first chapters of a work. May spoil "A Sense Of Fatal Allegiance" eventually, but I don't know because I haven't rewritten all of them yet. Proceed with caution.





	1. Chapter 1

So!

 _Prisoners Of Our Own Device_ was  _supposed_ to be a standalone work. I had the plot all mapped out and everything. And then I was busy as hell for months on end, with zero writing energy for fic projects, and that gave me time to reflect.

Chapter seven had ended on a cliffhanger that I hadn't planned originally, and when I had to take a hiatus and lost momentum, I decided to leave that cliff hanging (I watched a lot of old Doctor Who when I was younger, it's not a good story without an end of episode cliffhanger!) and, rather than revive a fic that had stalled, turn it into a series that really focuses on night to night vampire stuff, since that's what VtM does well.

The original plot outline was a bit breathless and too broad, and what was originally going to happen to Rachel was... a mistake.

Vandal was originally going to jump Rachel on her way home from interview and take her back to his blood-extraction-torture-dungeon at the hospital, he and Nadia were going to kill her because Nadia had a theory that she'd make a super powerful ghost and providing a super powerful ghost servant to her family of horrible necromancers would get her the short cut into being vampirised. And the second half of the plot was going to be Max and Chloe figuring out what happened while angry ghost Rachel absolutely fucked shit up from beyond the grave. Basically, I got sucked into the classic World of Darkness fallacy of bringing in other supernaturals and drowning out the core themes of the story, which is exactly what I keep telling people not to do.

And also: I've come to like Rachel more and more. I really didn't want to fridge Rachel  _again_ , she deserves better.

And also also: the context has shifted around her! A new edition of the tabletop VtM game has dropped and it's refocused attention onto this more intimate street level night by night storytelling, so rather than escalating and bringing in more of the World of Darkness like I originally planned to, I'm keeping the focus on LA vampire politics and the 'new' way in which they work.

But: I did write a bunch of stuff for that original plotline, and I don't hate it. I've also written a handful of scenes in the NEW plotline from other characters' points of view, and while they complicated the perspectives and bloated the chapters, I'm quite pleased with them as writing, and I'd hate for them to sit in Scrivener forever.

So that's what you're reading now. I'll try and keep this mess clear.


	2. Prisoners Of Our Own Device, Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a three month hiatus, I originally figured the best thing to do was jump back into Prisoners... three months later, and fill in what had happened in a flash back. Kind of how Life Is Strange works if you play it in chronological order. I like what I wrote here, but it skipped too much and repeated the cruel fridging of Rachel Amber, and that would not abide.

The face in the mirror is… neutral. It’s neither one of them, nor the other. It needs sculpting, contouring, not a hair out of place, and the heavy frames of hipster glasses to be Therese. It needs the raggedy pigtails and the shock of eyeshadow and the luscious painted lips to be Jeanette. Without either, with the hair down, it’s just a blank face neither of them knows from Eve. Tonight, Jeanette is in the chair, and she paints her face accordingly, pretty in purple, an electric shade glossing cold dry dead skin. It’s date night, and she gets to stay over.

Across Santa Monica, streets away from them both, Vandal rolls out of bed and swears, slams his microwave shut and sets it to work on his breakfast. Weekends are always quiet: all but the desperate among the Damned turn their gaze on the crowded bars and clubs of LA, hitting the Rack to hunt. He won’t see anyone worth seeing tonight - but even the meanest of Kindred turns meaner still if some ghoul doesn’t fix them up on cue.

Miles away, up in the Hollywood Hills, Nadia nods over an open book and a laptop. Her head aches with words - blood and benandanti, ghosts and witches dancing behind her eyes - but her place on the outer fringes of the inner circle gives her privileged access, and in the pages of Cosetta Giovanni’s diary she thinks she’s found the answer. It won’t be at all easy, but there’s a shortcut in this for her. She just has to be certain.

The door clicks open, and Mira’s shadow falls on Nadia’s back. She snaps her fingers, and Nadia snaps to attention, sliding out of her chair and keeping her eyes down, standing the way Mira likes: diffident. Like furniture that can think when it’s told to.

 _It won’t be forever_ , she thinks, as she opens her mini-fridge, takes out the cooler bag, and pulls out the bag she’s prepared with Vandal’s sample.

All this was then, of course.

What happens next is now.

* * *

 

The afternoon Greyhound disgorges them, one by one. People afraid of flying, with next to nothing in their hands, with a mad yen for the past or a drifter’s sense of the future. They file under the neon lights, through the steel doors, passing beneath the faded stencilled letters:

WELCOME TO LOS ANGELES, CA

One by one, two by two, in knots and tangles, they disperse through the station and the doors, out into the dry comfort and the heavy air of LA. Some of them linger longer than others. Some look like they don’t quite know where they are - or why.

People come to California to find themselves, after all.

The last person off the bus is the last person in the station, too. She’s tiny, and angular; all brittle bones and soft hollows. There’s something about her - something in the huddle of her shoulders and the darting of her eyes and the way her jacket and the thin grey hoodie underneath bunch around her like a shell. She radiates - not fear, as such, but a kind of watchfulness that comes from the same place.

She doesn’t pick up any luggage - the carry-on backpack and the camera bag seem to hold everything that matters to her. Her hands are closed around a cheap smartphone, holding it close, precious as a crystal ball - and she scrutinises it with a scryer’s attention, her lower lip straying under her top teeth as she concentrates.

“OK,” she murmurs. “OK.”

Minutes later, she’s on the 720 - the long slow ride that skirts the edge of Skid Row, passes the Last Bookstore and Pershing Square, arcing through MacArthur Park and Koreatown on its way to Santa Monica.

As she travels, she takes pictures; unpacks a battered vintage Polaroid, held together with tape and wishful thinking, and waits whole minutes for each little square to settle and dry. The fact that there’s a camera on her phone seems to have escaped her.

At every stop in Santa Monica, she shuts her eyes for a second and whispers to herself. Perhaps she’s praying for guidance; the shake of her head at each suggest she hasn’t had it. At Wilshire and Sixth - some way from the Pier or the Place or much of anything, really - she jumps up, sways down the aisle like she’s lost her sea legs, and just about makes it through the door with a mumbled apology before the driver pulls away.

She rubs her nose with the back of her hand, squinting at it like she’s expecting something to be there. It’s close to sunset, and the heavy sky’s turning orange as the light bleeds out and dies.

“Not long now,” she says, under her breath, as she heads down Sixth and darts across the tramlines. At the corner of Sixth and Colorado she stops, looks up; there’s a squat three-storey building with TRIP’S PAWNSHOP and a phone number painted on the side, layers of posters and scrawl further down. Four sets of windows, thick with grease, look down on the street, and she looks up from the street at them.

The sun is well and truly below the level of the clouds now, spilling down Colorado Boulevard from the sea.

If anyone was standing in any of those four windows, watching her, they’d see her take out the camera, fuss and fidget on the spot as she tries to frame a shot, backing further and further out into the parking lot. They’d see the beat-up F-150 nose its way out of the traffic and turn in sharply. They’d cover their eyes, if they were any sort of decent, because they’d swear blind it was going to hit her - or, more accurately, that she was going to hit it, stepping back into its path while her eyes were rooted on the horizon.

Which is a shame, because if they did cover their eyes right now, they’d miss something quite spectacular.

* * *

 

Today’s been another shitty day. Shitty from the opening bars of that fucking ‘blue canary’ song - which is going to stay as Chloe’s alarm tone until she can tell Rachel just how much she hates it and what a dumb prank that was - all the way to driving home with the sun in her eyes.

Life is shit. But it has to go on, doesn’t it? She can’t afford the gas to go home, as if the truck can even take the journey, and she can’t beg Mr and Mrs Madsen for money they don’t have, and no fucking way is she begging James fucking Amber for anything again.

Besides, going home means giving up.

Fuck that shit. William Price’s little girl is not a quitter.

Between the sun in her eyes and the traffic on Colorado, Chloe isn’t exactly wide awake when she turns off the boulevard and into the parking lot. If she’d been paying attention, she might have cussed the dumbass tourist out before her back had hit Chloe’s bumper and she might have been in the right instead of feeling like an asshole because she’d not been in the zone at fucking all.

But that’s not the world she lives in, so Chloe hits the brake, yanks the handbrake for luck, and kicks the passenger door open, wriggling out on that side rather than wing the girl with _her_ door.

She scrambles around the front of the truck and looks down, and her heart fucking stops in her chest and hangs there like dead weight, almost tumbling out and falling on the ground between them.

“No fucking way.”

Max half-grins, half-grimaces up at her, and then her face falls and it might be Chloe’s imagination but plop, there goes another heart, startled and silent and joining hers in the dirt. “Oh, I’m so - _Chloe_!”

She jumps up, and before Chloe can even start on the litany of abuse she’s been sitting on for years, her arms are locked around Chloe’s waist and her words are blurring into a frantic “I made it, I found you! It worked!”

Chloe gives her a minute, but only a minute, until she’s finally shut up, and then she grabs Max’s wrists and prises her off and shoots the little shit her best skull-eye. “OK. No. This isn’t… this isn’t how this goes. You absolutely do not get to show up out of nowhere after five years, five goddamn years, and then - ”

Max isn’t listening. It’s obvious; her head’s tipped to one side and she has that faraway look in her eyes, the one she only gets when she’s still and she thinks Chloe’s not looking and she finally relaxes for two minutes and lets herself think. Any second now she’ll say something weird and Chloe will wonder where the hell it came from, and dammit it’s annoying but it’s such a familiar kind of annoying, and that familiarity is already taking the edge off the pain.

“Don’t go home,” says Max. Called it.

“What the hell are you talking about, Caulfield?”

“I can’t - no, I can explain. But not here.” Max’s eyes are all over the place, looking everywhere except Chloe, but they finally settle on the ground. Which is good, because if looks could kill, Chloe would just have gone down for second degree murder, guilty plea guaranteed. Total crime of passion.

“Fuck’s sake. I’ve been at work. I’m tired. I’m basically running my own fucking Missing Persons case because every cop in Santa Monica has their head up someone’s ass. I want to go home, Max.”

“It’s not safe. You’re in danger. That’s… uh, that’s kind of why I’m here. Look… let me… is there somewhere round here we can eat? I just got off the bus. I’d kill for Belgian waffles. Maim, at least…”

“Screw the waffles. Back up to the danger part.”

Max looks up, finally, and her eyes lock onto Chloe’s, and something in the back of them glimmers. They’re old eyes, in an eighteen-year-old face; they’re old and sad and just a little too hard, and Chloe wonders what the hell happened to this girl she used to know so well.

“I’ll tell you everything, I swear, but please, come with me.”

“You know what happened the last time you promised me something? ‘We’ll write and talk all the time. And then you’ll come to visit and it’ll be like I never left. You don’t have to worry about anything changing.’ Sound familiar?”

“Yeah. I guess I have to explain that too. It’s sort of the same story. Can you just… hear me out? And if you decide it’s all BS, you can walk away, or… or whatever.” She must have seen something soften in Chloe’s face, because she adds, with a faint little smile, “And I’m buying. If that’s what it takes.”

“Free food? OK. I’m in. But this had better be one hell of a story.”

* * *

 

The present doesn’t feel any less like the past when they’re tucked into a booth at the Surfside. Chloe Price. Max Caulfield. Diner food. Then and now. Some things never change. But here and now, while the lights fluoresce and the splits in the booth seats grow a little wider, Chloe’s resolved not to let her off no matter how much this feels… safe. Familiar. Grounding. Exactly what she needs right now.

“I wrote you so many fucking angry letters. I’ve been waiting to tell you how hard you can go fuck yourself for years, and now you turn up out of nowhere and I nearly kill you before I get a chance. Way to ruin my master plan, Super Max.”

“I’m sorry. I… can try to explain. It’s not easy to believe, though, so…” Max pauses, hides her discomfort in a mouthful of waffles - her second helping, because after five years she can still sink two rounds of anything, and Christ knows where it goes because she’s built like a little bird - and sighs. “So… it started not long after I left. Which is ‘convenient’, I know. But…”

“Look. Cut the crap and tell me the story. If I have to sit through you telling me not to believe a word of it I’m going through the door right now.”

“OK. So. I didn’t get on… well… in Seattle. Or at my new school. I was so… confused, without you around. Like - I was so used to just tagging along with you and all your crazy ideas that I’d kind of forgotten what it was like to be alone. Or… how to make friends. And I didn’t want to bug you, after what happened to your dad… you had enough to deal with. You didn’t need to deal with my BS too. And I spent three or four months thinking that. And then… something happened to my parents. And my uncle. Which is where this gets… weird.”

Chloe raises an eyebrow, filling her mouth with grits so she doesn’t have to speak. She’s not going to let Max off. She’s just not.

“I… see things. I have visions. And that sounds so stupid when I say it to you.”

“Are we talking hallucinations, or full on future-vision? ‘Cause I can believe one of those…”

“It started a few days before… what happened. I kept having these dreams, and I knew, I just knew, that if we weren’t at home on this one night something awful would happen. I tried to warn my parents, but they didn’t listen… it was all just bad dreams to them, you know? I tried so hard, but… something happened. They went out - told me to stay home and try to sleep - and they never came back…”

“Holy shit, Max. I’m sorry.”

“It got worse afterwards. I started seeing other things. Monsters inside people. I’d be walking down the street and I’d see someone and then… it’s like I could see through them, and there was some sort of… thing in their skin, standing where they’d been standing, and everyone was just… going on with life around them. I was so scared, all the time, and like a dumbass, I told people. I was already waiting for a foster home and then… everything just…”

Max’s eyes settle on her again, and her hands stop playing with her food and gently creep out towards Chloe’s. Without quite realising it, Chloe folds her hands over them - they’re so damn small and so damn soft - and holds on as Max starts to speak again. “I wasn’t trying to ghost you, Chlo, I swear, but I - I’ve been in care, or on a psych ward, for four years. I’ve been watched. I didn’t want to - I mean I couldn’t - ”

“But you’re here now. What did you do? Break out?”

“Kind of. They couldn’t keep me there after I was eighteen, and… I won a competition. Photography stuff. The prize was a free trip to San Francisco to see my work in a gallery, but… when I was on the plane, I had another vision. First one for three weeks. I saw you. Running from a wave. Drowning. You looked… different. I mean, you looked like you look now, not the way I remembered you… but I’d know you anywhere.”

“You would, huh?”

“I thought about you all the time, Chlo. All I wanted, I promise, all that kept me going was knowing I’d be eighteen some day and they’d have to let me go and I’d come find you and tell you I was sorry. So I did. Blew off the exhibition and took the Greyhound down here. And then… well. Here we are.”

“Hella good work though, Max Caulfield: PI. You found me.”

“Only just. Barely in time. And… too late. I’m really sorry…”

Chloe slides out of the booth and back in again, nudging Max along the seat, folding her into her arms. Enough. Enough with giving each other their space, enough with trying to explain. Doesn’t matter that she can tell Max is hiding something - she’s always been able to tell. Doesn’t matter that she decided Max was never getting let off for this.

None of that matters. Not when you’ve been waiting to cry in someone’s arms for five years.

Max’s sobs are huge, ugly, world-shaking things, welling out of her, slow and powerful and inexorable, like the heartbeat of the world.

For her part, Chloe just cries. Bitter, soft, silent. Lost girl tears.

* * *

 

Long, long minutes later, Max scrubs her face with a napkin and pulls herself together with a sharp breath, and she asks the question Chloe’s been dreading answering:

“What was that about a… missing person?”

Chloe sighs, and drops her head into her hands again, talking slowly into the table.

“My… ah, shit. My girlfriend has… I don’t know if she’s walked out on me, or what, and I’ve got zero fucking idea where she is.”

“Oh. Oh. Chloe, I’m so sorry… are the police… I mean, what happened?”

“Fuck knows. Everything was going right at last. My life - after you left, after Dad died - went totally to shit, and then Rachel showed up. Like I’d asked for an angel to carry me away from everything, and there she was. I got mixed up in her troubles and her dreams, and she… helped me get away from mine. It was her idea to move down here, and conquer Hollywood, and,” Chloe sniffs, an ugly don’t-make-me-cry-again sniff, “and now she’s fucking gone. And it’s my fault. I let her down, I cheated on her, and I wasn’t there when she needed me…”

It’s Max’s turn to reach out this time. Hesitantly at first, she pulls Chloe down, wraps her arms around Chloe’s neck, and hangs on tight as Chloe’s story chokes and dies.

“I can’t believe that,” Max whispers. “You’d never let anyone down. Not by choice.”

“I did. I totally did. All I had to do was… keep going. Say no. Stay in and wait for her. But they fucking talked me into it…”

“Who are we talking about here?”

Chloe snorts - it’s almost a laugh, albeit a strangled, tear-muffled, mood-swing kind of laugh, a weird twitch from a breaking heart pulling itself together. “Long fucking story. Come on. Walk me home. I’ll tell you on the way.”

And she does. First block away from the diner, she tells Max about their creepy-ass neighbour and the long odds of meeting someone else from Arcadia Bay all the way down here in Santa Monica; second block, the creepy-ass twins who took an interest in Rachel and made an investment out of her; third block, the big night, the all-or-nothing dinner date that could win Rachel the future of her dreams, and she’s just getting onto how she, personally, fucked up so badly by spending the night making out with some intense chick from Skid Row instead of being there to pick Rachel up like she’d promised when they walk out of the alley opposite Trip’s Pawnshop and Chloe’s shitty little apartment -

\- when Max shrieks and grabs her and pulls her back into the alley mouth, and just as Chloe’s asking what the fuck that was all about, every window on the top storey shatters and a raw gaseous boom fills the night air.

The dust and shards settle, and Chloe pushes Max off and stumbles into the street, and looks up.

The top floor of Trip’s Pawnshop is burning - and it’s burning purple.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah. I'm Pricefield trash in my heart and this was a crude attempt to rush things into where I thought I wanted them to go. I like what I wrote, but not where I was going with it.


	3. Prisoners Of Our Own Device, Chapter 9 (a fragment)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is as far as I got with the post-hiatus reboot attempt. Again, I don't hate it as a piece of writing, but it just wouldn't go any further than this, probably because it was too close to the original Life Is Strange or something.

Max steers Chloe through the rest of the night. It’s a challenge for her. She’s not a people person; she’s nervous around anyone official, especially cops, and Chloe is not easy to handle right now. Max struggles to cut across the tirades - “Gas main my ass main” is so Chloe, so funny even when she’s furious - but she just about manages to act as intermediary and swap numbers and take names while Chloe’s raging about how it doesn’t look like she has fuckin’ insurance, does it?

She has money, and a hotel room booked; it won’t be any trouble to put Chloe up tonight while she gets herself a little more together; no, officer, of course, call us in the morning if there’s any news. Even if she has to drag Chloe there herself as the shock settles in, and wave away the EMT - no, Chloe’s a tough cookie, but don’t worry, she’ll hit the walk-in if there’s any trouble.

It’s fine. It’s all fine, because Chloe says “Thanks, Max” as she flops back onto the bed and rubs her forehead.

Max doesn’t say _I owe you this a hundred times over_ and she doesn’t say _I’m so sorry_ because she’s starting to understand this Chloe better now, understand how five years of pain and love have changed her. Instead, she says “Wowsers. What a night,” as she turns the chair around and nestles into it as best she can, and she waits for the backbite she guesses Chloe won’t stop herself delivering.

“Understatement of the fucking century.” Chloe’s voice sounds flat and tired again, but the reflex wouldn’t be stopped. “A double-barrelled shotgun of shit right in my face. Everything I had left was in that fucking apartment. Everything of Rachel’s. Every, fucking, fuck!” She rolls onto her side, and makes a horrible all-cried-out-no-tears-left sound, an inverted sob, and thumps the pillow.

Max keeps her distance; she stands up, hovers, near and far and near again, like a moth before it feels safe to land. Some concerned little sound must have slipped out of her, because Chloe rolls back over, rips off her beanie and runs her hand across her nose, then through her hair, and then smiles an awful hollow ghost of a smile at Max.

“That was gross, wasn’t it?”

“Little bit.”

“I’m taking a shower.”

“Sure. Don’t be too long in there. I need one too.”

An hour later, they’re both clean, and Chloe’s already practically passed out by the time Max is out of the shower. Max hovers - no way is Chloe going to want to share a bed with her, they’re not back to old times yet, but no way is she going to admit that and spend another night sleeping upright, and it’s a mercy for her when Chloe mumbles “Get in, jackass.”

So she does. Chloe hogs the bed, and she snores, and Max is careful to sleep back to back, because this isn’t old times and it isn’t forgive and forget - and then, irresistibly and by degrees, she falls asleep too.


	4. Prisoners Of Our Own Device: wake me up when september ends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fragments of the original plot. These were written BEFORE the hiatus, and represent an even MORE abortive attempt.

“This is an… unexpected pleasure. What do you want at… three in the morning, Vandal?”

[“I have a question. Important one. How much of the Teenage Witch do you want?”]

His voice is crackling with anger. It doesn’t take much to imagine him crawling up the walls, fists clenched. Maybe he thumps the wall. Inches away from killing the next person who crosses his path. It’s not him: she knows that now. It’s what he does. It’s anger, and power, and death.

“Are you planning what I think you’re planning, Mister Cleaver?”

[“I… agh! I won’t be fucked with like this! I’ve given her everything! Eleven fucking years! My life, my liberty, my heart, and now I’m being passed over because fucking Sabrina here tastes nice?”]

“That would be a yes, then.”

[“She’s got to go. For Therese’s sake. She’s dangerous. Intoxicating. Clear and present threat.”]

“You know, I’m so glad you said that.” Nadia drops her voice lower, softer, almost purring into the phone. “Because I want all of her. Blood. Body. Life. Everything.”

The noise on the other end of the phone is a phlegmy, mad-dog growl. There’s a thud - he’s definitely thumped the wall now.

[“I was hoping you’d say that.”]

“When do you want to do it? I can’t get away tonight…”

[“O-ho, you want in on this?”]

“Yes. You’ve got to do this right.”

[“Oh, here she goes again, telling me how to - ”]

“No. Listen. This is for me. I meant it: I want everything. Down to her soul. It can’t be clean. It has to be… extraordinary.”

[“I can hear you licking your lips. Stop it.”]

“Do you mean that?”

A throaty chuckle; the dog on a choke chain, for the moment. [“No. I’ll bring her in tonight, but I promise I’ll keep her fresh for you.”]

 

* * *

“I can tell you this,” Nadia says, “because I know you’re not here yet. I didn’t do this because I wanted you to die. It’s nothing personal. That’s Vandal’s problem. I just need… I need to get away from Mira. I need to jump the line, get myself turned, because I’m so scared, Rachel. Once a month I get fed HIV-positive blood, and I’m waiting for the day my luck runs out or my PrEP pills stop working or I just get caught and I have to admit that I know. This fucking family. Mira cheats her way into eternity because she got sick, and now I have to do the same before her poison blood kills me.”

Nadia sits down, holding Rachel’s dead hand in her lap, stroking in between her knuckles.

“You’re my ticket out. If you’ve stuck around, if you’re going to come back as strong as I think you are… you’re a godsend. A nice strong spirito to impress Uncle Bruno, and I can say I found you and bound you all by myself, and doesn’t that mean I deserve a break at last? But I need to be sure, Rachel. I need to know you didn’t just die on me.”

She reaches for the bolt cutters, lines up the fingers of Rachel’s left hand, and gives them a reassuring squeeze - reassuring, that is, for her.

“I’d say ‘don’t get mad’, but that… would kinda defy the point.”

* * *

 

She’s simply dressed - shirt and slacks and soft flat shoes - but something in the cut suggests this simplicity cost more than everything Chloe owns. She blinks through her bangs, thicker than the sharp black slopes of hair that frame her tanned, winsome face, and she answers in a slightly breathless, awkward tone:

“I’m… I was a friend of Vandal’s, I suppose. I’m Nadia. Nadia Milliner.”

* * *

 

Humid, crowded August rolls on, into exhausted, drear September. The nights grow longer, and lonelier, and bitterness sets deeper into her soul.

_She’s never coming back._

Days go by. Day after day of working, driving, asking, always pressing, never getting anywhere. Barely sleeping.

* * *

“Dead and buried. Used up, in a pale September, and it’s Hallowe’en tomorrow night.” Vandal turns the razor over and over in his fingers, murmurs in a quieter, smoother tone than she’s ever heard him use before. “And she was beautiful. Such a lovely smile.”

“No.”

“I’ll take ‘a river in Egypt’, Alex.” That sick little chuckle again, and then he muses: “Or would you have preferred it her way? She worked it out, long before you did. They sicced me on her because she was stalking them.”

The razor swings to and fro in his hand, chopping the air around every pronoun, punctuating his explanation with the soft turn of metal on metal. “I hate to say ‘she asked for it’, but she did. And they said no. No to some dumb kid who’d lived a handful of years, who’d go on forever in the shadow of the life she could have led. Always running. No cause. No consequence.”

Vandal snaps the razor shut and open again. “Your girlfriend was fucked up. Then she fucked up my mistress. Then I fucked her up. The end. No moral.”

He’s not lying. The revelation hits Chloe square in the heart, passing through her like a cold wind, like a bullet, like the fist of God, like all of them and something bigger than anything any metaphor can hold. He’s not lying. He’s insane, and he’s babbling about some conspiracy shit, but she’s the one with the gun and there’s enough fear in his voice for her to know he’s too shit-scared to lie.

“Son of a bitch -”

“Slave to a bigger one. Let me barter for my life; set my Price, as it were. Your girlie’s dead and buried but that doesn’t have to be forever. There’s a house in the hills where the dead are living still, and they may just be able to reunite you. The face you’re looking for is Nadia’s. The world doesn’t end with me. Or her.” 

* * *

“I’m so sorry, Chloe.” Nadia runs a hand through her hair, and smiles faintly, sadly. “You don’t know how special you are. To someone like me, to us - the Giovanni, I mean. You’re such an opportunity. If I can figure you out, Mira’s bound to choose me for the Embrace. It’s your dead girlfriend or eternity. You understand that, don’t you?”

* * *

“You must hate this. Do you want to know a secret?” Nadia’s gloved hands cradle Chloe’s face, holding her head still. “So do I. I could be doing so much more.” Nadia’s eyes are inches from her own, still and dark and penetrating. “I could take your soul apart, find what makes you work first-hand, without all these books and guesses and tools. And you would want me to. I’d be in your veins and in your memories. You wouldn’t know or care where you came from, or who brought you here. You wouldn’t be fighting me. You’d be so much happier.”

 


	5. Rachel Amber's Bogus Journey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While I was struggling with plot direction and Rachel interiority, I wrote this weird bit where she blundered around Chinatown as a ghost for a while, and met some other ghosts. As much as I like the useless, bickering ghosts of two useless, bickering old Chinese hitmen, they're not exactly great characters and I'm dealing with the whole kuei-jin aspect of VTMB by resolutely ignoring it, because fuck that Orientalist shit in the eye. But I did have some fun writing this, for my sins.

  
“Well now, pretty girl. There is one dollar future - that what you see. Then there is ten dollar future - that what you get.”

“Do I look like I’ve got money?”

“You always got money. Everything here made of us. Every building. Every bullet. Every coin.”

“So… I give you a little bit of myself? Fuck. I’ll… I need the help. I’ll take the one dollar future.”

“Smart girl. Ten dollar future costs a lot.”

* * *

 

“There is storm coming. Blowing in from north, down 101. Storm in form of a girl. She can set you free. And she can save your butterfly.”

“Chloe’s in danger? How? What from?”

“Sorry, pretty girl. Your dollar just run out.”

“You bastard.”

“Not first time pretty girl call Ji Wen Ja nasty name. Won’t be last.”

* * *

 

“Wait.” The other one - Lu Fang, the drunk - is following her. In his hand, the ball of whatever Ji Wen Ja took from her is settling into the form of a bottle, and he takes a long pull as Rachel sets her feet and prepares to give him hell. “Wait. Lu Fang is worried about you. Lu Fang can taste the dark in you already. You made one mistake. You make more - you go dark. Lu Fang not want that. Not want to fight you either. So Lu Fang give you… tip. Like horse race.”

“More drunken mastery? Oh, this is going to be good.”

“You stay out of Hollywood. Up there in those hills… not safe for ghosts. Not for any ghost. You go up there, you come back in chains. Your girl go up there… you better find someone to bring her back.” Lu Fang taps his nose.


	6. Prisoners Of Our Own Device: an implausible burglary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So, Prisoners was going to be a Hunter: the Reckoning crossover at one point! I actually went to the trouble of statting out Max and Chloe as Hunters, working out the power sets and everything, but that ended up Not Being The Appropriate Direction Either. 
> 
> Also, the catacombs under the Giovanni mansion are one of the strangest and most dopey bits of VTMB (how do the Changs get in there before you? how the fuck do you get the Sarcophagus out?) and they don't exactly work here either, but again: I did enjoy writing action scenes where Max is a boss with a gun and Chloe whacks ghosts with powers she didn't know she had five minutes ago.
> 
> This little collection of scenelets also wraps up the Nadia plotline in a nice canon-compliant way, and it has the Nosferatu boys in it, so there's that.

_Oh shit oh shit oh shit no -_

“Cute. Drop it.”

Nadia takes a step toward Max, and another. Her hands waver around the gun, blurring, shivering, and then it barks and the room rings and there’s nothing in Chloe’s ears but the aftermath of that. Nadia doubles over, staggers back, gloves slick with blood bubbling out of her gut and eyes suddenly wide open in shock. Max is shaking, and Chloe almost rolls her eyes as she struggles in the straps.

Finally, finally, Max seems to get her shit together. She grabs a scalpel from Nadia’s tray, slips it under the tape across Chloe’s mouth and cuts.

“Thank fuck.” Chloe can’t hear her own voice, never mind Max’s answer, but dear God she’s here and she’s working the straps from Chloe’s wrists and just as she looks down to work the buckle, Chloe sees Nadia pull herself upright on the counter. The blood’s stopped pumping. Nadia’s pulling her hand away from her gut, Max’s back is still turned, where the fuck is the gun? Chloe yells as loud as she can, so loud her throat might just burst, and Max looks up and sees her face and turns, holding the fucking scalpel because of course she is - but Chloe’s hand is free, and she’s holding the gun, and her hearing just fades away as five more bullets rend the chilled laboratory air.

Nadia slumps, tumbles to the ground, and this time, she doesn’t stand up. Chloe’s head lolls back. She can’t hear for ringing. She can barely see for tears. The only things left in the world are cold leather straps and soft dextrous fingers and a pair of hammering heartbeats that punctuate the violent whine in her ears.

Her vision’s clearing by the time Max has her legs free. She can barely stand, even with Max taking her weight, and she reaches out for support, grabbing the first thing she can reach. Whatever it is moves, giving beneath her with a grind of gears, and the table she’s still half propped against gives too. Chloe keels over backwards as the table starts to slide down, through the laboratory floor, into some wide cold space beneath, ratcheting its way down like the world’s grimmest elevator. Max half-falls, half-scrambles on top of her, and Chloe holds on tight to her until they reach the floor.

* * *

 

They hit the ground, and for a second or two they’re clinging to each other in a column of light. As Chloe’s eyes adjust, she realises shit is by no means over. Where they are now is: dark, and old, and less terrifying than Nadia’s fucking torture chamber, until Max holds up her phone with a still-trembling hand and casts a light down the corridor ahead.

It’s… crowded. There are walls, yes, dank old bricks and high vaulted ceilings and rows of staircases leading up into other chambers. There are holes in the walls - suspiciously coffin-sized holes. There are - those fucking things torches go in. Torch brackets. All the horror movie bullshit is there, but it’s hard to pay attention to that, because the other walls, the walls within the walls, the ones she can see and see through, are moving. Dust and shadows and something else slither, heavy and sluggish, through the gloom, and if she looks around, Chloe’s certain they’re piling up behind her.

Max is pulling at her shirt and arms, dragging her from the table. Once her feet hit the floor she’s up, locking her arm around Max’s shoulders, half-kneeling to keep her balance. Some part of her that’s detached from the rest, looking in on all this like it’s an actual horror movie, is cursing Max for staying the same fucking height all these years. It’s a part of her that can curse Max Caulfield more or less on autopilot, while the rest of her slumps in pathological gratitude and lets herself drag/be dragged forward, into the dark.

Her ears are still ringing - only on the very edge of hearing can she make out the faint “come on” by her side - and as they push on into the dark, one step at a time, one pale wavering column ahead of them, Chloe’s very, very glad she can’t hear anything else.

If she could hear, she might hear the screaming.

There are faces in the crawling dust and shadows, faces that lurch out of the dark like flashbacks, like unwanted memories. Faces with hollow, sunken eyes, no noses, toothless mouths open wide in torment. Faces that stretch and shiver and come with half-formed hands that clutch at the air in front of them and behind.

Step by silent step. They keep going. The passage leads them down, and down, into the hill. The maze or tomb or whatever it’s supposed to be is massive. They keep going. Turn right, every time. Keep turning right.

They stumble into a wide open space - a round room like an arena, with staircases leading down to its floor and two doorways on the other side. The end of the line. They’re almost crawling now, exhausted, but they have to get out, and the shadows are still snapping at their heels.

Chloe sways and staggers, almost falling with Max as her legs give out beneath her. Enough is e-fucking-nough. She’s not going to die down here. Not now. Not after all this.

She doesn’t fall. Her hand scrapes and scratches on the floor. She stands, slowly, shakily, in the dark, and balls her fists like she’s going to punch every last one of these fuckers in the ghost-balls. Time to live the barbarian dream.

“Fuck all of you!”

Her voice sounds weird - lost in the echoing tinnitus, lost in the longest night of her life, lost in this huge silent space she can hardly see - but a pressure she didn’t know she was feeling seems to lift as the echoes die away. Her hands and eyes ache on the inside, like she’s pressing hot coals into them, and for a second she sees twin figures dancing in the dustmotes and the dark, dancing toward her at the head of a column, a shuffling morass of those silent faces.

“Back off!”

Chloe takes a swing at a squat, wiry shape. It dissolves at her touch, whining, reappearing whole feet away, and the others stop in their tracks.

“Max. Two exits. Which way gets us out of here?”

She’s practically standing over Max now, hunched and protective, waiting for the next spooky motherfucker to try something, waiting for the small voice to answer her. She feels Max shudder where she’s fallen, against Chloe’s calf muscle, and then the answer comes.

“Left. Left and down. Right just brings us out in the garden.”

“’K. Back up slowly. You open the door.”

Inch by inch now, they creep back. The other twin hisses and jumps, but Chloe’s en garde and punching wildly, and it pulls back with a scowl like the other one. There’s a rattle and a scratch behind her; thank fuck, the door opens outwards.

“There’s… a ladder. Water at the bottom but I think it’s safe. I’m going down first.”

As Max descends, Chloe grabs the door, slams it, and scrambles.

The rest is thigh-high water - waist-high, for Max - cold and slick and stinking. The rest is splashing in the dark, wading on and on, the occasional shaft of light from a drain or a manhole to guide them. They pass steps, side tunnels, and here and there, an actual door.

It goes on for hours.

Finally, a door gives under both their hands. They stumble, together, and they fall.

* * *

“It wouldn’t have worked,” Bruno growls, still cradling Nadia’s head in his hands. “The _maghi_ don’t take their power with them when they die. If they did, we’d be a hell of a lot better off. But she wasn’t to know. If that pretty dead girl is at all powerful it’s because she did something across the _sudario_ \- because she gave in. Let a piece of herself go for more power, rode on the storm.”

* * *

“Gar, you… may wanna take a look at this.” Mitnick taps one of his many, many monitors. Security camera footage, all muted grey-greens.

“What am I looking for here… ahh, I see.”

“I thought, uh, what with the calls we took in and out of Strauss’ place tonight… the Gio traffic, y’know?”

Gary mm-hmm, mm-hmms his way through Mitnick’s halting explanation. The fact of it is, it’s unnecessary. Mitnick’s good. He knows exactly how good he is. That’s why he’s here, after all. He just has to explain himself, to prove how good he is, in this diffident nothing-to-it kind of way. It’s like respect, and Gary likes it, so what the hell. It gives him time to think, to assess, to calculate likely outcomes.

Underneath those movie-star good looks, Gary Golden had always had a ruthless streak. Calculating. Eye for the main chance. People underestimated him, they didn’t see beyond the square jaw and the exquisite malleable hair and the brilliant blue eyes, and when he’d lost all of those and become the pinched rodentile thing in the tuxedo he was today, he’d finally had a face that matched his nature. Tragic irony, or poetic justice?

He watches the two girls splash along the storm drain, stumbling through the first doorway that opens to their touch; watches Mitnick click and drone his way through the other cameras further along the tunnels, retracing their route. North.

“OK. Good catch. Lock down that entire tunnel, except the exits. Don’t put the frighteners on ‘em unless they drag their heels about leaving.”

“Huh. I was expecting, uh, ‘call Bruno’, ‘f I’m honest. How come we’re not just gonna, uh, sell ‘em right out now?”

“Elementary, my dear Mitnick. If they got out of the House on Haunted Hill, they punched right through Bruno’s defences to get here. Which means he either can’t find them under his own steam, or he’s driving himself cray-cray trying. Which means by the time he can look for them, he’ll be so pissed we can name our price just to put him on the trail. Want me to do jazz hands for you?”

“I’ll imagine it.” Mitnick’s claws clatter with mechanical precision; tappa-tappa-tappa, and Gary’s mind wanders for a few brief seconds to shiny floors and shinier shoes, chandeliers and champagne, bright light city and his soul on fire…

“Plus,” he says aloud, clapping Mitnick on the shoulder, “I want to see whose day they ruin next.”

 

 


	7. Prisoners Of Our Own Device: some scenes with some Tremere in

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My OC, let me show you her! This follows the burglary chapter, and introduces one Jennifer Pale: a spooky bisexual disaster vampire who stumbled tits-first into being a badass video game protagonist. I like the dynamic she has with Regent Strauss here, and it was interesting writing from his point of view, but I don't think this is how I'm going to use her when she eventually crops up in the extended series. Also, I find her vaguely embarrassing, in the way that only an is-this-a-self-insert-or-a-fantasy-or-what OC can be.

“Adherence to our organisation’s code, without rights or representation, is a condition of your clan’s continued existence, Mister Giovanni. Do not test me.”

“I ain’t stupid, Mister Strauss. I ain’t about to piss the Promise up against a wall just ‘cause two girls got where they shouldn’t be. That’s on my people. But here’s a fact for ya: I didn’t tell ‘em where to find us. One o’ your guys screwed up. Which makes this your breach, and now they’re away so they’re in your turf. Which makes it your problem.”

A pause, and in his mind’s eye, the Prince and Regent of Los Angeles can hear the cigar shifting in Bruno Giovanni’s mouth. He can barely taste them, but old habits die hard, and he knows his biggest rivals have one thing in common: a sharper sense of smell than his. He’s probably chewing one right now. Force of habit.

Maximilian Strauss has not worn his power well, but there is one constant in which he has never changed; he knows the value of a good silence. He lays one now: soft and enfolding the ground around Bruno Giovanni’s feet. The gangster loves talking. It’s a fault. His voice reaches out for the rope, and Maximilian’s silence hands it to him.

“Now I don’t propose to make this difficult for ya. Ya want us to help y’out, ya got it, and if those girls show their asses north of Sunset again, they’re handled, no questions asked. But I want it understood that this ain’t our fault.”

“I don’t especially care whose fault it is, Mister Giovanni. If there are hunters on the streets of Los Angeles, I need to know about it. You’ve done your civic duty. Will there be anything else?”

“Just one thing. I brought the girl they killed over. I’ve put a lot into her over the years, and I didn’t fancy losing her just ‘cause some kid got lucky. Figured, in the circumstances, I’d rather ask forgiveness than permission.”

“Population control in North Hollywood, Mister Giovanni, is very much your problem. I trust you to make the appropriate arrangements for her. I’d like to meet her, of course, but under the present circumstances it can wait. A formal presentation; perhaps when your domain is more secure.”

Maximilian hangs up. Impolite, perhaps, but it doesn’t do to let plaintiffs have the last word.

* * *

 

“That’s enough, Ms. Voerman.” Strauss holds up a hand. “Our organisation recognises you as the legitimate authority in Santa Monica. That recognition comes at a price; acceptance of our organisation’s rules and praxis. If you are not prepared to make that acceptance, you will be removed from office and you will still be subordinate to the organisation’s authority. If you choose anarchy, you abandon authority. Am I making myself clear?”

“Perfectly.” Therese. “But - ”

She pauses. Strauss’ glasses gleam in the firelight, and his pencil eyebrows twitch. From that impassive face, the smallest movement speaks volumes. Therese swallows her pride and her nerve and tries again.

“If someone is hunting on my streets, I would appreciate the support of the organisation. Obedience is the price I pay for protection as well as recognition. Isn’t it?”

Strauss leaves a heavy, pregnant pause.

“Camarilla property has been compromised, as has the smooth running of the Medical Center facility. Official investigation is certainly justified for a breach of this size.” Another pause, long enough for Therese to start feeling pleased with herself and settle down and stop sitting on her hands, and then he adds: “My condolences on the loss of your ghoul.”

Two and two: together. It’s a low blow: reminding Therese that the indispensable little people are walking, talking breaches of protocol, ripping tiny holes in the Masquerade every time a mouthful passes their lips. He doesn’t need to know; he just needs to remind her that the sins of the pawn come back to the queen.

That the bastard seems to manage perfectly well without them adds insult to further insult.

* * *

 

Maximilian touches his fingertips to his temple.

“Are you busy, childe?”

He waits a minute or two for the answer; it’s drowned out by background sound, a steady thubb-thubb-thubb of what Maximilian supposes is technically ‘music’, and by the sound of voices and hot air. Mortals, having a good time. It bursts into the peace of his inner sanctum, laid over his perception like a veil, and he can’t stop himself from frowning.

“Sorry, Max. I’m in a meeting. I’ll be with you in twenty.”

She arrives in sixteen minutes, as it happens.

She communicates in a language he’s learned to understand; a semiotic blur befitting these hurried nights, in which they all play too many roles. The soft green velvet and the rimless glasses say 'scholar'; the thin smile and sharp lines say 'dominatrix'; the stance, as she comes to a halt in his study, says ‘apprentice’.

Maximilian’s adopted, bastard childe is all of these things; frequently, she’s all of them at once, and more. Tonight, though, he needs ‘officer’.

“I have a puzzle, to which I’d like you to propose a solution. Item: a telephone call from Bruno Giovanni, complaining that two Imbued breached his security and dispatched one of his favourite ghouls. Item: a visit from Therese Voerman, concerning a Camarilla property in Santa Monica, destroyed by fire; one of her ghouls was trapped inside.”

She nods, gliding smoothly into the role he requires of her. This is why he brought her into the Pyramid, and why he’d taken her on personally; she’s adaptable. She learned to play the Camarilla operative and the anarch go-between before she learned to play the Tremere apprentice, and she moves between them with an ease Maximilian’s never had himself.

It was only in that last role that she felt safe. Maximilian didn’t have to bully or bribe her; all he had to do was offer her a safe haven and an explanation, in return for her bias in affairs she was already involved in. A lower price than she’d paid anyone else, and no strings attached. Her loyalty was secured long before it was guaranteed.

“Item one: almost certainly bullshit, pardon my French. Even ruling out that it’s a Giovanni talking, it doesn’t add up. Two Imbued good enough to breach that fortress he lives in, and they whack one ghoul and bolt? Unbelievable.”

“I defer to your personal experience, in that regard. Item two?”

Maximilian is sure she knows he’s already made his decision. She doesn’t underestimate him, doesn’t read this as a show of weakness. She is, after all, apprentice to his regency; adopted childe to his sire. This is about training her; leading her to conclusions he’s already formed, her perspective confirming his.

“Could be a coincidence. Could be junior-tier hunters knocking off the targets they can handle. Could be related. I know - ” she holds up a hand, warding off the correction she foresees, “ - correlation is not causation. But still.”

“I concur, of course. I’d like you to look into the incident in Santa Monica first. Mister Giovanni suggests the Imbued have gone to ground in Hollywood.”

“Does Gary know?”

“Is there anything he doesn’t?”

“Does V.V.?”

“Do you think she should?”

“Well… I defer to your personal experience,” she says with a wink behind her spectacles, “but I say… no. She spooked easily even before what happened to Ash, and I don’t want her drawing them to her. So I say let Gary play his game. If he decides they’re a threat he’ll almost certainly try to sell the fact to us; then I go in officially. I think I still have an in with the Giovanni…”

His childe falls quiet for a moment. In a different tone - less clipped, softer round the edges, closer to the apprentice, possibly even the childe she never truly got to be - she asks him a question.

“Did they say which ghouls?”

Maximilian remembers her early days. Her error of judgement. She’s never allowed herself to keep a ghoul since the first; she manages her assets with money and gunshots and sharp, steely eyes. Maximilian has always been grateful - what happened reflects badly on him, and on their relationship, and on the security of their chantry if you don’t stop and think about how unlikely it is the Sabbat even knew where she lived - and he’s never pressed the issue with her again.

“Miss Voerman specified. Vandal Cleaver.”

“Long time coming. Can’t say I’ll miss him. And… the Giovanni?”

“I’ve no idea. Does it matter?”

“Just asking.” She straightens her glasses, and her back, and her tone; when she speaks again, she is every inch the officer. “Two nights?”

“Sooner, if you can.”

“’Course.”


	8. Prisoners Of Our Own Device: original ending (a series of fragments)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is how it was going to end. Highly derivative of the original Life Is Strange ending, in a way that faintly shames me in the here and now. Unnecessary levels of Rachel blaming and Pricefield-is-better propaganda that I no longer stand by, or even in the same room as. And Jennifer's in it, being smug and badass and cringeworthy. But I don't think it's badly written, except for the how-many-references-can-I-cram-in final paragraph: just badly conceived.

“The storm is…”

“It’s not you. It’s not me.” Chloe shuts her eyes, willing the words to be said, to be true, to be false, to be anything other than what they are. “It’s Rachel.”

* * *

 

Inch by inch. Yard by yard. Board by board. They’re practically crawling up the pier, fingers locked into whatever gaps they can find, arms and legs wrapped around the railings. All around them the storm howls, the waves hiss, wood and metal groan and grind, and on the face of the deep the pale fire crawls and lashes at the heavens.

They crawl past the Playland Arcade, every screen dull, some cracked, some toppled.

They keep crawling. The gate’s slammed back against the wall, and maybe it’s Chloe’s imagination but maybe the wind twists and the metal shears and just for a moment it looks like they’ll hit -

Max’s face is streaked with blood. How many times has she seen them do this? How many times has she seen them tumble into the ocean, the tumbling debris, betrayed by the shaking structure beneath their feet? Nose. Ears. Eyes. There can’t be much left in her. As the wind eases for a moment, Chloe bundles them both across the boardwalk, into a nook that’s shut on three sides. She lets Max’s weight slide from her - god, she’s so fucking light, and yet the whole weight of the world seems concentrated in her.

“I can make it!” She shouts, but it’s like whispering as the wind rises higher and wallops the volume out of her. “You’ve done enough, Max!” More than. So much more than.

Max shakes her head - is she saying no, can she not hear, is she just fucking lost in time?

“I can fix this! I have to!”

Max can barely move by herself. Chloe tucks her out of the wind as best she can, shoos her into the corner, wraps her up in herself and hopes like hell that’s enough. She takes one long look at this tiny bleeding half-drowned thing that used to be her best friend, and turns her back, peeking around the edge. They’re close to the end of the pier, and the wind’s blowing across the buildings. If she stays low, covers the ground fast… she might make it. Might.

Here goes -

“Wait.”

Chloe looks back over her shoulder, and in that brief glance she sees it and Max sees it and before she can turn away Max is kissing her hard, one long clumsy before-we-die kiss with her hands on Chloe’s cheeks and Chloe’s hands tangled in her hair, and she tastes like blood and tears and the ocean and the whole wide world.

It never ends, and then it does. Max finally comes up for air, resting her forehead on Chloe’s, screwing up those beautiful blue eyes rather than meet Chloe’s gaze. Her lips move, and Chloe presses closer, sliding cheek to cheek, picking out that soft voice from all the cold hard horror in the air.

“You’d better come back to me.”

“I’ll try.”

* * *

 

“I love you. I have ever since we met and I gave up everything to be with you, here. But… you’ve finally gone somewhere I can’t follow.”

“Can’t?” says Rachel, in her own voice.  
“Or won’t?” says the echo, without moving her lips.  
“Why not?” they say together.

Chloe takes a deep breath, and another. Even in this timeless moment, the storm saturates her - the air is heavy and cold and it’s soaking right down into her bones and beyond. There’s nothing left of her but her breath and her beating heart that’s sinking deep, deep into the Pacific, down until it joins Rachel’s bones and stays with her forever.

Then she glances over her shoulder.

“Max.”

It’s hard to read Rachel’s face when everything about her is glow and shadow, but the shifting greys and blues give the tiniest hint that her eyes are narrowing and she’s about to strike.

“What about Max?” Rachel whispers.  
“You have to say it,” says the echo.

“She came back. She saved my life. I think… I think she loves me. Same way I love you.”

“She left you!”

“I thought we were past this!”

Chloe can’t tell which voice is which any more. They’re both angry. At her. The yawn of the ocean underneath the pier has never felt so tempting and the only way out, the only possible way out, is through.

This is going to hurt so much.

“You left me too,” she says, in the smallest voice she can manage.

“What?” That’s Rachel. Her Rachel. Her fury almost drowns out the other voice. What’s it saying? Something like - “I can never leave you…”

“Fuck… Rachel, you left me before we even arrived here. You’ve always been running… away from your dad or into your future or what-the-fuck-ever, and now you’re fucking dead! You always run and you only looked back for me and I was so fucking grateful I’d do anything for you! And now someone feels like that about me and it fucking sucks, okay? Because I can’t do what you do. I don’t have a fucking dream to chase, and I’m done with chasing yours. It hurts. And it’s hurting you, too, and it’s hurting her and everyone else we touch and I just want it to stop. I wish I didn’t, but…”

“You don’t know what you’re saying.” Rachel sounds like she’s choking back tears.  
This time, Chloe hears the echo, loud and clear. “You want… to let me go?”

“No. Never. But I think I have to.”

Rachel’s face darkens. As the shadows rush in, her features shimmer back out of the blue, and grow darker and darker, standing there like a photo negative of herself. She smiles, a shadow of that gorgeous smile Chloe fell in love with three years ago, but it doesn’t reach her eyes.

Those are still pale. Pale, evanescent blue, and wide, and so afraid.

“Thank you,” says the echo, and Rachel says simply: “Go.”

And then, at last, the rain comes down again with a whack. The stopped world starts. Chloe’s standing on the end of the pier, wind whipping her clothes around her, picking up again to tear her from her feet.

Chloe turns and runs, turns her back as the pale flames rise on the wave. Her feet pound beneath her as the wind rises and rises, as the boards start to splinter and the pillars start to shake and the pier tears itself down around her.

She’s sprinting by the time her feet leave the floor and the floor leaves her feet. Everything’s dark and tumbled and tossed, and in the roaring rush of wind and water she’s lost sight of everything.

This can’t be how it ends.

This can’t be how it was meant to go.

* * *

 

Max wakes up… on a beach. The first thing she sees is Chloe’s hands, coiled around her waist and clinging on for grim death. The second thing she sees is the driftwood fire, piled and flickering a few feet away. Then…

Oh dog. The pier. The buckled ferris wheel, the shattered boardwalk, the broken piles standing out of a now-calm sea.

“Hello, Max.”

Max looks around, trying her hardest not to jump, not to startle Chloe awake. The voice is… okay, Maximus, think. Female. Odd accent - New England, somewhere. Maine? Vermont? One of those states that’s all forest where people still talk like Shakespeare refugees half the time.

Someone stirs on the opposite side of the fire, and Max tenses herself.

“Who are you?”

“Someone who should have been looking out for you.” The woman beyond the fire stirs, pokes at the blaze with a stick - long stick, too. She’s being careful to stay away. Max catches a glimpse of pale skin, red leather, sunglasses at night - seriously? - before the fire settles and she edges away. “You can call me Heather. It’s not my name, but… she won’t mind. You’re welcome, by the way.”

“For… ?”

“The save. Or do you think this fire built itself and dragged you out of the Pacific Ocean?”

[there's a space here where some more dialogue should have gone]

“My job, for want of a better word, is to keep the peace, and keep our secrets. You two, and the late Rachel Amber… you know more than you should. That’s a problem, for me. I should have let you drown, or maybe I should have confirmed what you know and then killed you. I haven’t.”

“Why not?”

“Reasons. The biggest one…” ‘Heather’ sighs, and pokes at the fire again. “Heather. The real one. I saved her life, once, on my first night here. She fell in love with me, she threw away everything for me, and I felt so powerful that I let her do it. But… I was making enemies. One of them got to her while I was… trapped, somewhere. Out of action. She… He killed her. It shocked me out of my stupid fantasy. I tore this town apart to find him, avenge her, clean up the streets, but… I left some stones unturned. People who’d been useful to me, but were… too dangerous to people like you.”

“People like Nadia. And that Vandal creep.”

‘Heather’ nods. “You’ve… corrected some of my mistakes. You’ve shaken things up. That puts me in your debt, so… here’s the deal. You can stay here, in Santa Monica, and take the risk. I’ll have to investigate. You’ll have made enemies. I can smooth things over with Vandal’s… owner… for you. She’ll be pissed, but she’s a reasonable woman. The Giovanni, though… you’ve robbed them of a promising apprentice and a powerful tool.”

“Rachel is - was - nobody’s fucking tool.”

“That’s all she’d be if they got her. And you’ve kept her safe from them, which is another one I owe you. They have long memories, and deep pockets, and they’re good at working in ways I can’t stop. But here’s your other choice: you get off their radar. Go back to whatever podunk town you came from and stay out of sight. Creatures… like us don’t travel well, and we don’t like small towns. You’ll be safer there than here. There’s a lot of people leaving Los Angeles tonight. I can’t be everywhere at once. Stay off the interstate, head through the parks, put your foot down, and you’ll be out of here before I can officially catch up with you.”

There’s something about ‘Heather’s’ voice that makes Max want to push her luck, just once more. “This isn’t just about favours and debts, is it?”

‘Heather’s’ face is a death mask, the sunglasses hide whatever her eyes are showing, but just for a second, Max is sure the line of her mouth twitches. “No.”

“You were in love with her, too.”

“Yes. I bought her a handful more days, because I could, and she got sucked into the dark, and she deserved better. So did Danielle from Arizona, so did poor Copper, and even fucking Patty, and Rachel Amber, and so do you. I’m not a total monster. I’ve killed dozens of people to keep the big secret. But you don’t know enough. You’ve stood on a beach and looked at the sea and you still have time to turn away. And you’re in love.”

Max braces herself for a scathing denial, but… no. Nothing. Chloe’s hand finds hers, and her blue hair shimmers in the firelight.

“So fuck off, both of you, before I have to kill you.”

* * *

 

“So. We’re young, we’re in love, and we’re apparently among the fucking Chosen Ones. We’ve got a full tank of gas, it’s dark, and we’re wearing sunglasses. Where to?”

Max considers it for a long moment. Not LA, that’s for damn sure. That’s for Rachel, and for Chloe, and the time they had together. That’s a past in which Max has no place…

… but there’s no harm in a near miss, while they retrace their own steps. Bakersfield, then through the desert - what’s the line again? A flat-out high-speed burn through Baker, and Barstow, and Berdoo, and then safety… obscurity… just another freak, in the freak kingdom.

Only, you know, they’re going the other way.

“… Heaven. Or Las Vegas.”

“What?”

“Cocteau Twins?”

“Who?”

“Just drive, Chloe.” Max pokes her tongue out. Chloe grins her beautiful pissed-off-but-not-pissed-off grin, throws her a slapdash salute, and starts the engine first time.

“Aye aye, cap’n.”

As they pull out, Chloe starts to sing, drumming her fingers on the wheel, and when she realises what Chloe’s singing and why Chloe’s singing it, Max can’t help but laugh. What a precious fucking dork, and never mind that Max was thinking the exact same thing a minute ago.

“I was born in a cross-fire hurricane, and I howled at my ma in the driving rain… but it’s all right now…” Chloe nods expectantly, takes her hand off the wheel for an encouraging wave, and Max rolls her eyes. What the hell.

“… in fact it’s a gas…”

“But it’s all right now…”

They sing the last line together, because why the hell not? “I’m Jumpin’ Jack Flash, it’s a gas gas gas…”

Max shakes her head. “You’re trash, Chloe Price. And I wouldn’t have you any other way.”

* * *

 

And if you want a picture of the future, dear reader, imagine the sun setting behind the Highway 101, sinking red and full into the deep dark Pacific Ocean.

Imagine a battered F-150, with a cluster of plants in back and a shotgun under the seat and two girls in the cab. Heading south for the winter, skirting north of an untimely grave. Riding eternal, if not exactly shiny or chrome. Walking a thin line between danger and disaster…

… forever.


	9. 'Black Planet' (fragment 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And then I started planning sequels, because of course I did. This happened after I'd read more LIS fanfic and realised that what I was really into was closure and healing and growing, rather than doubling down on the sins of the original game.
> 
> I like these fragments, but I'm pushing the ship too hard, not giving Chloe the space to grieve that she had in the original, and consequently I think it comes out even worse than the original game does. At least they're trying to talk it through, right?
> 
> And hey, gratuitous The Sisters Of Mercy songdrop at the end. 'Black Planet' would have been the arc song for this sequel fic, in the same way that 'Hotel California' was for the first. I'm still kinda tempted to do that.

Just on the edge of Sierra Palona, on the Sierra Highway out of California, on the edge of Castaic Lake State Park, there’s a dirt-track rest area, across the road from the kind of motel that doesn’t need a name, because there’s only one motel in Sierra Palona.

It’s pretty quiet. Most of the traffic’s headed north along I-5, or east to Palmdale on I-14, especially this close to dark.

The rest area’s dotted with RVs and big rigs. It’d be easy to miss the beat-up pick-up, even before it backs into a stand of trees, screened from the road and mostly from the other vehicles. The sky overhead is crisp and clear; the storm’s cleared the air.

Max stirred in her sleep when they turned; the clunk of the handbrake pulls her a little closer to consciousness, and she blinks the sleep from her eyes, not quite willing to move yet.

Chloe’s lighter has been sitting on the dashboard all day; she scoops it up, scratches, scratches, and strikes on the third go. From where Max is sitting, the flame casts a faint warm light straight across her profile, her bare collarbones, the taut lines of her visibly tense neck; it blends gold into all the colours of her hair and lips and eyes.

She’s gorgeous.

Chloe looks around at her, snaps the lighter shut, and blows a thin plume of smoke across the cab. She grins, forcing her weary eyes to widen, and leans her back against the door, scooting around so she can look right at Max.

“Take a picture, it’ll last longer.”

Max reaches for a satchel that isn’t there, and her shoulders slump still further into the seat. No camera. No phone. No journal. Maybe totally-not-Heather took them - she did say she had to cover her tracks - or maybe she lost them at the pier. Ashes to ashes, or full fathom five. Doesn’t matter. “Shit. I… can’t.” Rubbing at her eyes, absolutely not going to cry over this after everything Chloe’s lost, Max makes herself smile back, or at least move her lips upwards. “I guess I’ll just have to remember.”

“The fuck you will. I’m getting you another camera and I’m posing for you every fucking night if I have to.” Chloe takes another drag on her cigarette, then stubs it out on the dashboard, and… shit, she tucks it into her beanie. “Anyway, I’m way better looking when I haven’t been driving for five hours.”

“Five hours? You should have woken me.” Max stretches, squirming around in her seat. This is so weird. They’ve just walked out of a deeply unnatural disaster and here they are… bickering over whose turn it is to drive. Like an old married couple.

“Can you even drive?”

“Not stick, but… I thought you’d like the company.”

Chloe’s smile thins a little. “You… wouldn’t have liked mine. I needed… I need to work over some shit.”

“The pier.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you need to…”

“Fuck yes I do. We both need so much fucking talk therapy it’s not even funny, Max, but… not now. I’m not even started thinking about getting over it. Right now…” Chloe sighs. “Right now, I want, like, a mountain of muffins. And bacon. And… a cold beer. No - several cold beers. And a blunt. And to sleep for, mm, give or take forty hours.”

“That is a perfect plan. I love that plan.” Yawning, Max wriggles around and jiggles the doorhandle.

“Oh, shit. That one sticks on the inside. Hang on.” Chloe kicks her own door open, hops down, and circles the cab; seconds later, she’s holding out a hand with a mocking bow, the scruffiest courtier helping the shabbiest princess from the rustiest carriage any fairy tale has ever seen.

Max… actually needs the help down. Her legs are stiff, and it’s a surprisingly long jump from the cab to the dirt floor. She stumbles, almost falling, before Chloe scoops her up and sets her down and maybe-just-maybe squeezes her a little too tight in between.

“Y’know, even if you could drive stick… I don’t think you could reach the pedals.”

“You are mean when you’re sober.” Max tuts. She’s still in Chloe’s arms, and she can’t quite manage the biting retort a short-joke deserves right now. “Where are we, anyway?”

“Buttfuck Nowhere, California. But my diner sense is tingling. I’m telling you, that place across the highway is cool.”

This turns out to be the case. Abusing Max’s credit card - thank God she keeps that in a pocket with a zip - covers them for a mountain of bacon waffles and a six-pack. There’s no room at the only motel in town, but there’s an outdoor store up the road and Chloe talks Max into springing for a pair of sleeping bags and a ground tarp too. A few bungee cords and some double-barrelled swearing later, and they have something in the back of the truck which just about passes for a tent.

They leave the cover down for now, though. It’s a nice night. The storm’s cleared the air, and up here in the hills, the stars are coming out - the real ones, not the blinding lights of Los Angeles. They’re four and a half beers into their supply - Chloe’s trying to slow down, because two beers is a lot of beer when you’re Max-sized - and drunk enough that neither of them gets awkward about zipping the sleeping bags together, propping their backs against the cab, and watching the night settle in.

“Y’know,” says Chloe, putting her third beer at the very edge of arm’s reach, “my perfect plan was missing something.”

“It was, huh?”

Suddenly, brilliantly, Chloe cracks a tight-lipped smile, her whole face curving and softening out of its furious angles. “I also want you to kiss me again.”

“What?”

“Kiss me. Right here. Right now. Prove this is for real, and I didn’t fucking dream it last time…”

So Max does. She turns over and Chloe turns over and with one arm each awkwardly tunnelling under each other, they kiss. Because they’re here. Because they’re alive. Because they’ve saved each other’s lives way too many times this week. Because right now, on the rickety bed of this piece of shit truck in the middle of California, under this glorious sunset, life is… well, it may just about be OK.

* * *

Four days have passed. It feels longer.

“I’m just saying this had better not be a rebound. It’s not what you need, and… OK, this sounds selfish, but it’s really not what I want.”

“Fuck’s sake, Max. Why d’you think I’m sleeping on my fucking hands every night?”

“Chloe, this is not just about sex!”

“I know. But dude, I have to draw the line somewhere. We sleep together every night, we wouldn’t be fucking alive without each other, and… I’ve always… I never blamed you for walking out on me, not really. I just wanted you back, for years and years. Even when I was with Rachel - and I don’t mean I didn’t love her because I sure as hell did love her - I just put that feeling away in a box because someone was finally as important to me as you were, but if you’d come back I’d have been fucking thrilled ‘cause I’d get to have both of you in my life. You are not my fucking rebound from Rachel any more than she’s my rebound from you.”

‘She’s’, Max notices. Present tense. Chloe’s changed - she can talk about her feelings, straight out, for one thing - but she still can’t quite say that Rachel’s gone, definitively gone. Max won’t be calling her on that. She doesn’t need inexplicable future-sensing powers to tell how that’s going to go down. Chloe hates being corrected at the best of times, and a ‘Rachel was’ will mean Max is walking the rest of the way across Oregon.

Then again, it’s hard enough getting over someone you love dying when they don’t come back as some kind of hella-spooky, crazy-powerful force of nature and smash up your entire life. And when you don’t get seduced and kidnapped by a mind-fucking vampire wannabe who only wants you for your girlfriend’s ghost. And when you, and your best friend who you’ve not seen in five years, have saved each other’s lives three times in a week because apparently you’re both superheroes or something.

Chloe’s staring at her, waiting for her to say something, but she’s lost for words, and she can feel the awful inviting silence with that sixth sense she has to live with now, and she knows saying nothing’s what gets Chloe to say -

“Shit, Max, I cheated on her before… before she disappeared. With one of them, for fuck’s sake. Maybe the actual night she disappeared. I was so mad at her, and… I keep thinking… it’s bad enough that I… if I’d been there - ”

“You’d be dead too.” Max blurts it out without thinking, without checking, she’s just so desperate to say something to Chloe, anything to get her out of this place she’s in.

“Well, you’d fuckin’ know, wouldn’t you? I guess you never have to say ‘what if’ again, do you, Max?”

“I didn’t mean - ”

“Can we not talk about this? Please?”

“We have to, sooner or later. And that’s not my stupid dumb time sense, Chloe, that’s just… us being people!” Max surprises herself with how loud she’s being. “And Chloe, she wasn’t even there! I read that room over and over again, you made me, and she wasn’t there!”

Chloe slams her hands into the bonnet, kicks the bumper, again and again and again, the licence plate swinging loose on the fourth blow and falling into the dust on the fifth.

“I know, OK? I know, Max. I know she was… I know she went there first. I know she would have jumped on Jeanette if she’d been alone and for all I know she did. But knowing that doesn’t make what I did right and it doesn’t mean I don’t wonder ‘what if I’d just fucking stuck by her’, because that’s what I did, OK? I followed her a thousand miles and even though she let me down I let her down too. And that’s what hurts. Not what she did. What I did.”

Tears are rolling down Chloe’s cheeks, pain bubbling out of her, but she cuts it off, wipes her face on her sleeve and gives her front tire one last vindictive kick. “And you? You don’t need me like that. I don’t have to be responsible for you… for both of us. You aren’t replacing Rachel. You’re… something totally different. And I love that. I love you.”

Max stares at Chloe - at red-rimmed eyes and scuffed knuckles and ragged-ass stained flannel and all. Wowsers. Did she just say -

“I love you.”

Shit. She said it again. This time lower, softer, like she was… tasting the words. Surprised, maybe, to be saying it. The tension seems to be draining out of her, into the earth and the air, and there’s nothing in her face now but wide-eyed wonder.

She lets out a short, sharp sigh, and one last time, in a what-I-tell-you-three-times-is-true whisper, she says:

“I love you.”

* * *

 

“You’ve got this.” Max cosies up to Chloe, wraps an arm around her waist, and squeezes her hip insistently.

Chloe snorts, but she dials 1-800-REVERSE and recites the number from memory nonetheless. She crosses her fingers, momentarily, with the hand that’s not holding the phone, but they find her way to Max’s shoulder and are toying with the ends of her hair before the telltale click as someone answers…

[ “Madsen residence.” ]

“Mom?”

[ “Chloe? Oh my Lord, you’re okay!” ] Joyce practically screams down the phone, and Chloe’s heart soars. [ “We were so worried… that storm has been all over the news for the last week! Where are you?” ]

“Uh…” Chloe looks at Max, who mouths the name twice before Chloe gets it. “Some place out in the backwoods called… Valley Falls?”

[ “Why aren’t you on the interstate and coming home, Chloe? Was this Rachel’s idea?” ]

Chloe starts to roll her eyes, in a long-conditioned reflex, but before they’ve even reached their apex the words have hit her in the head and the chest like bullets and she’s leaning against the phonebooth wall, almost dragging Max off her feet. It’s a hell of a lot harder to cope when someone asks you what you’re coping with, and all the adrenaline and anodyne of the last few days are draining out of you.

“Rachel… Rachel’s not with me, mom.” She chokes the words out, squeezing the hard plastic handset because the alternative is doing Max a serious injury, but given that Max has both arms locked around her now, they might be on course to break each other. “She… she didn’t… she’s…”

[ “Oh, gosh, Chloe, I am… I’m so sorry.” ]

“I… oh, shit…” The sobs are bubbling out of her now, the hot tight ball in her chest pulsing in waves that roll out of her eyes and nose and mouth. A part of her wonders what stage of grief this is - she’s done denial, what comes next, is it anger or depression or what the fuck is it? She’ll have to skip ‘bargaining’… “… oh God, this is fucked up, this is so fucked up…”

One of Max’s hands is rubbing her lower back, small soft circles that don’t mean anything and don’t even reach the root of all her pain. She can’t hear what Joyce is saying, can’t see a fucking thing, can barely feel herself drop the handset and slam her hands into the booth wall. She slides down - Max lets her slide down, guides her to the floor, and wraps one of her hands into both of Chloe’s while her other hand picks up the handset.

“Hello, uh… I guess it’s Mrs Madsen, now?”

“It’s Max. Yes! Yes, that Max. The one and only…” Max bites her lower lip, as if false confidence lives somewhere in her blood and she can draw it out like… like…

Chloe’s losing it again, she knows. Her clenched fingers bring Max’s to her forehead and she rests them against her aching skull, forcing herself to at least try to pay attention.

“I… knew. I can’t say how, Joyce, I’m sorry. Everything’s been crazy this past week, even before the storm. We… Chloe, mostly… had some real trouble. I really can’t tell you over the phone…”

There’s a pause. Max’s head bobs, in that way it does when she wants to say something but either anxiety or sheer basic goodness are holding her back.

“Mm. Well - ‘eventually’ is the best I can say right now, but… I’ll try. I think Chloe needs time to… pack her dreams away. Or whatever.”

Max smiles faintly at whatever Joyce says in response.

“You do that. I’ll look after her ‘till then. OK. I promise.”

From her cramped squatting position it’s almost impossible for Max to reach the phone, but she just about manages to hook the handset back on, and then she’s back and she’s wrapped around Chloe, a tiny shell that can’t possibly hope to shield her from all the pain in the world or field all the pain flowing out of her, but -

“Promise?” Chloe says, the word slithering up her throat and out into the world.

“Promise.”

* * *

 

Three days later, they’re on the Williamette Highway. It’s not exactly the home stretch - they’re still taking their time - but they’re heading slowly north and west, toward Eugene and then Corvalis and then the winding 20 to Newport, and then the final stretch due north on a road that, in one of life’s shitty little ironies, leads all the way back to Santa Monica.

There’s a song Chloe heard one time in the Asylum, when she was in that desperate frantic looking-for-Rachel stage. Drear shit, but it comes to mind now, as she mentally scrolls back and forth across the map she’s looked at three times since breakfast, and she suspect she’s earwormed for life now. Snatches of it drift in and out of her mind, on and off her lips. Something, something Europe…

> And I ride down the highway 101  
> By the side of the ocean, headed for sunset…  
> For the kingdom come
> 
> Black planet hanging over the highway  
> Out of my mind’s eye, out of the memory  
> Black world, out of my mind
> 
> And the rainbow rises here  
> In the western sky  
> The kill to show for  
> At the end of the great white pier…


	10. 'Black Planet' (fragment 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was where I realised that there was no way in hell I wanted to send Max and Chloe back to Arcadia Bay. It was treading a circle - putting them back in a place where nothing significant, as far as this fic was concerned, had actually happened to them. I'm pleased with how I wrote Nathan but the rest makes me urge.
> 
> Also, I had this dumb idea about David being a failed Hunter, and... yeah. Redeeming David Madsen? Why would I? The best you can say is that he thinks he's doing the right thing, but he's still a helmet.

“Hey, asshole.”

David rolls his eyes. “You never change.”

Their fist-bump is… awkward, like they’re putting on a show for Max’s benefit, but when David speaks again, there’s a genuine concern in his voice - an edge taken off his tone, a slight softening of the glare. “Your mother told me about what happened. I’m… sorry.”

Chloe peeks through her hair at him. She looks different here, in his presence - somehow smaller, more angular, more closed-in. Her whole stance is tighter, like she’s expecting trouble and almost angry not to find it. “Thanks. And, uh… thanks for not making a thing of this. I don’t want to be back here any more than you want me back, so…”

David holds up his hands. “I never said I didn’t want you back. I’ve just… learned that we’re never going to get along. And that’s fine. It doesn’t mean I don’t want you to be safe, and happy, and if here’s where you need to be right now… we’ll work something out.”

“Dude.” Chloe’s mouth twitches into a tired smile. “Have you been taking classes or something? That sounded reasonable.”

“It was your mother’s idea,” says David through a faint sneer, and that’s pretty much the end of that. He walks around the front of the truck, with Chloe trailing after him, and opens Max’s door. “I bet you haven’t fixed this lock yet…”

“I was a little busy, OK?” Chloe holds out her hands to help Max down, butting in front of David before he can extend an arm. He goes for the handshake instead.

“You must be Max.”

“I guess I must be.” Smile. Head-bob. Why does she have to make this weird? Who says something like that?

“Thank you,” David says abruptly, hanging on to her hand. “For looking out for Chloe.”

* * *

 

Joyce doesn’t say anything, at first. She stands in the doorway and bundles Chloe into her arms and just pins her there for whole minutes, holding her daughter like she’s afraid the world will take her back.

* * *

 

When Chloe speaks again, it’s in the most dead voice Max has ever heard her use - like her soul’s been drained away.

“I’ve never lied to you, Rose. I never will. Rachel’s dead. The guy who killed her confessed, to me. He’s dead. I watched it happen. I made it happen. There’s nothing left to investigate.”

“James won’t believe -”

“What Mr. Amber believes is up to Mr. Amber. Always has been. OK? I’ve told you the truth. I’ve only ever told you the truth.”

* * *

 

“Who the fuck d-d-d’you think paid for the repairs on your piece of shit truck? You think Rachel’s fucking dad, put his hand in his - fucking pocket? For you?” Nathan thumps the plexiglass between them, trying to get up in her grill. “It was me! OK? Me!”

“Why the fuck would you do that for me?” Chloe slaps her hands on the glass too, leaning in, fighting back. This is her and Nathan all over; she tries to do the right thing, but there is no right thing to do by Nathan, and it always ends like this, but… Rachel liked the dweeb, so she has to see it through.

“I didn’t do it for you, you punk-ass… Manic Panic shit-sack! I did it for Rachel! Because she asked me to! I wanted to help people, OK? All they ever had to do was fucking ask me, admit I had something they needed!”

Nathan settles, looks down at the table, and shakes his head at the attendant. His fists are balled, and he’s swaying slightly, but he doesn’t look angry - eyes screwed tight shut, teeth clenching and unclenching, he looks more like he’s trying not to cry - or trying to. “F-f-fuck, Price, she was my friend too, OK? I know it - doesn’t make any - fucking sense to you, but she came to me, and I owed her. You too.” The words are sticking in his throat, and he struggles with the long sibilance of his next word, dragging it out, groping through it for meaning, for purposes. “Ssssshe helped me stand up to my dad, and you, you set me up with Sam back when…”

Chloe gives up. Poor kid. That’s all he’s ever been to her. She had him nailed from day one: a weird little dude trying to sort his own shit out, and it wasn’t his fault he had that stupid punchable face and he’d only ever learned to lash out. Like Chloe could give him shit for that, in any reasonable world. “You knew about that, huh?”

His eyes snap open, and he grins that shiteating grin of his. If he didn’t reset like a switchback, if he’d just see a fucking mood through, he might be okay… coming from Chloe, who’s just decided not to be mad at him. Is this why she hates him? Because he reminds her what a goddamn hypocrite she can be?

“Y-yeah. She sucked at keeping secrets.”

“You got lucky there.”

Nathan giggles, breathily, nervously. “Guess I did. I was never into Rachel, though. She just… got me, you know? From the word go. And like, all your problems just…” He finger-guns the air, once-twice-thrice, shooting imaginary bottles off the wall. “Like I n-need to tell you that.”

“’S cool. I’m glad someone else saw it, y’know? Like - people kept fucking worrying about us, like she was leading me along, or… and… she totally was, but somehow…”

“You, you, you just don’t care, do you? You’re getting, a one-seat performance of the Rachel F-freakin’ Amber Show. She always made you feel, like…”

“Like your problems didn’t really matter. Like you could kick the world’s ass as long as she believed in you.”

Nathan nods. His hands relax again, though he sticks them into the crooks of his elbows like he’s ashamed of them.

“I’m sorry, dude. I had you all wrong.”

“N-nothing doing. Not like I gave - you much chance either, huh?” He shakes his head, pulls his hands out just long enough to run his fingers through his hair and rub his eyes. “We should’ve been friends. You were dating my best friend, you got me a g-girlfriend, we used the same dealer for fuck’s sake… I just c-couldn’t see past the money thing, y’know?”

“Hell of a lot of money to see past.”

He flinches, huffs at her, looks away and back again, and musters another weak grin. “I’m… sorry I flipped at you. I have this whole… thing. Doesn’t mean it’s OK, but…”

“Dude, I can’t judge anyone’s shitty anger management.”

Nathan nods. “T-thanks. Thanks for - for - only you and Sam and Victoria ever come and see me. And Vic’s girlfriend, one time… So… thanks. And s-say thank you to Sam for me, yeah?”

“Will do. Can I say ‘get well soon’, dude?”

“I’ll never get well, Price.” There’s a flash of the old Nathan there, and then he smiles, really smiles. “But I might get better.”


	11. Phony People, Come To Prey: Chapter 3, alternate scenes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a lot of dreary "god I hate what I was trying to do here", it's nice to have some material that I really LIKE. There's nothing wrong with any of this, it's just that the chapter was tidier if it started in media res on the Monday night, and stuck to Rachel and Chloe's points of view. Still, this is worth a look if you're at all confused about the chapter and the implied backstory, or if you want to look into the final scene from Therese's point of view.

“So…”

Chloe lets that vowel hang for a good long time, folding her arms and giving Tommy the best stink-eye she can muster - which is a pretty good stink-eye now she’s not stressed over Rachel or money or anything but what a piece of shit she is, which is same old same old for her and she can cope with that, especially when someone’s to blame.

And someone is.

And it’s these two assholes who own this junkyard and this trailer and forty to fifty hours of Chloe’s week right now. The goddamn Sears brothers of Brothers Salvage, Santa Monica.

“What?”

“So, what the hell happened Friday night? I remember one fucking drink vanished within five fucking minutes, and I don’t remember how the hell I got home.”

Tommy laughs at her, which is in Chloe’s opinion distinctly un-fucking-fair, and sits down on the edge of the desk, still laughing, and rubs his eyes against his sleeve for what feels like an age of the world before he gets his shit together.

“You still mad about that? Girl, there is no pleasing you. You got wasted, for free, and you got lucky, and I’m guessing your girlfriend’s fine ‘cause you left it two days to yell at me…”

“Yeah. ‘Got lucky’. Rachel made it back OK and everything was fine, so I’m not gonna kill you while you sleep —” Chloe gets up in his grill, birthday-party-mad-at-David levels of mad, and he doesn’t lean back but he doesn’t lean in either, brushing her off.

“You don’t know where I sleep —”

“On the couch in your office. When you’re in a food coma. But that’s not my fucking point, boss-man. I’m mad because you made me lie to Rachel. Twice over.”

“We got you home safe, didn’t we?”

“Not the point either, dammit.” Chloe balls up her fists and turns her back and waits her next round of cusses out, letting them die on her tongue, staring out the office window for want of anything better to look at.

“I’m sorry we tricked you into a good time. Least, I am, and you can blow up in Thunder’s face later and see if he don’t say the same thing.”

“Ugh. OK. Just fill me the fuck in on what I actually did? I remember that girl bought me another drink —”

“Or several.”  
  
“Or whatever, and I think… we made out. And then what?”

“That’s it.”

“That’s it?”

“You passed out or something. I’d been keepin’ an eye on you but I didn’t wanna intrude ‘cause I still think your girl rides you too hard,” and Tommy holds up a hand and cuts it through Chloe’s “none of your business” before it starts, “and the little redhead you’d been mackin’ on comes up and says ‘hey your friend needs a ride home’ and that’s it, Chloe. Promise.”

“Thank fuck for that.” Chloe winds her glare back to a six out of ten and sets her mouth tight for a second before she goes on. “OK, your life will be spared. And not just because you provide me with gainful employment. But fuck, don’t do that to me again, yeah?”

“If you are pissed at external things, it is not they that piss you off, but your own reaction to them at which you are pissed. Words to that effect, anyway. Marcus Aurelius.”

“Are you trying to tell me I’m pissed because I’m pissed?” The sound hisses out of Chloe, and she… damn, she is finding it hard to stay mad. “What does that even mean?”

“Means chill the fuck out and get back to work, tank girl.”

And that, until nightfall, is that.

* * *

 

“I’m sorry,” Therese says, when Rachel Dawn Amber steps in. Good Lord, the girl is trying. She’s matched Therese’s look as well as one glimpse and a budget could allow; she’s Therese in miniature, in soft focus. She’s beach party warm where Therese is dinner party cold; she’s blue feathers and woven bracelets where Therese is stern specs and Rolex. She’s alive, and full of light, where Therese is…

Well. The less said about that, the better.

“What for?” Barely a flicker on that wry face; she’s very good, and almost in control. Therese stands up, a palm out to forestall Rachel, keep her on her feet, keep her off balance - no. Therese shakes her head, abruptly, cutting that whisper out completely; she is who she needs to be, and tonight is her night. That’s the arrangement.

“If you’ll let me finish,” says Therese, and allows herself a thin, glossy-black smile at a memory - a little man in a long coat, insulated from a chill he didn’t feel and was nothing on what he had inside. Let me finish was Lacroix all over. But he’s out of the picture now, swept away on nine years’ disgrace, and her star is on the rise.

Maybe she’ll buy herself a frock coat, just to really hammer the point home.

“I’m sorry, but we’ll have to walk and talk.” Therese looks down at Rachel over her glasses, ushering her around and about with the hand that isn’t gathering up her bag, walking toward the door, steering her protegé without laying a hand on her. “I’d hoped for a more leisurely briefing, but I need to be in Hollywood tonight; there’s an opportunity I’ve been pursuing for some time, and I’m told I may have a competitor. It’ll be in your interests too, I’m sure. The man we’re meeting is… old fashioned Hollywood. From a certain point of view, he is Hollywood.”

Rachel purses her lips and nods as they emerge into the lot. “That’s fine, Ms. Voerman. I’d rather not sit on my hands if there’s anything else to be done; I can learn on the job.”

Since she’s looking, Therese remembers to breathe, fill her lungs with a little burn of cold blood warming colder air. “Good girl. I think we’ll work well together. My car’s just here,” and of course Philippe has the Mercedes open already, the door swinging open, and they slide into the back seat.

By the time they’re on the Boulevard, Rachel has the file in her hands, and Therese is working out how much she can afford to say. It wouldn’t do to rip off the masque all at once, even for this girl. Best ensure she’s on side, grace and favour owed with interest, before filling in all the details.

“We’re on our way to an encounter with Isaac Abrams. Mr. Abrams is… the classical media baron. He’ll tell you, at great length if you indulge him, that he was behind every major hit since James Dean passed away. He exaggerates, of course, and he’s moved further behind the scenes in the last decade or so, but he still has money, connections, and keys to doors most would-be movie stars don’t even know exist.”

Rachel mm-hmms her way through the top two or three pages of the file, and as she reads, as the Boulevard winds by outside, she asks: “And what’s your interest, if you don’t mind me asking? This is all good news for me, but…”

“Some years ago, and in somewhat tragic circumstances, he came into possession of a nightclub; it’s fallen derelict since its previous owner passed away, and Abrams, for largely sentimental reasons, refuses to do anything with it. I want that club. I also want to know who else wants it.”

* * *

 

“You seem confused. It’s understandable. I probably should move somewhere a little more upmarket, but - well, the Asylum is where it all started. It feels like home.” Therese laughs in the corner of her mouth, a putting-you-at-your-ease chuckle that belies what’s really going on here.

For all that she’s brisk and brusque, firm hand on the tiller, Therese is terrified. She’s talking too fast and smiling too much and she must, surely, be giving the game away.

The truth is, she’s never done this before. This come-into-my-parlour spiel: this is Jeanette’s game, and it’s Jeanette who took the lead in their first feedings, Jeanette who held her shaking hand and brought the cup to her lips so she could taste it. Therese has never liked touch; it was a necessity then and she avoids it now; but here she is with this girl, only a girl, with so much potential and so much blood like nothing else she’s ever tasted.

Therese is in two minds, and she hates it. And she’s good at hiding hate. But she doesn’t dissemble much in here. In here, inside the Asylum, she can say what she means, and she often does… but she doesn’t know any more. And she’s questioning everything. Stand behind the desk? You’re taking refuge. And you don’t take refuge from someone you’re planning to use. But how?

At least Ms. Amber’s eyes are still on the painting that dominates the apartment, frowning down on the Voerman sisters’ world; still on the dark and leaden face of Father with the two little girls at his hand, with their backs to autumn and their eyes on the world. At least she can’t see like Therese sees, can’t see mounting confusion, fear, desire, ambition, one vaulting atop the other in a cascade of colours. But what if she could?

Therese follows her eyeline to the two little girls with their father’s hands on their shoulders, and the bubble wells up in her, pressing against the inside of her skin, up through the base of her brain where the hunger wells.

“What are you doing here?” she whispers, and the bubble halts, holds, shivers like a tightrope, and Jeanette whispers back “Helping!” and a hand moves at someone’s will, the backs of black gloss nails running over the leather of the desk. Someone puts their best foot forwards, and runs those same nails up the girl’s back, softly softly, and rests their fingertips on her shoulder. Someone thinks it’s a shame they didn’t make her wear the dress again tonight, but then - all of this was planned, but none of it foreseen.

“Janus,” says - oh, damn it, just call her Rachel, no sense standing on ceremony at a time like this, and whose thought is that anyway - reading the plaque aloud. “Roman god of… time. Am I right? Time, doorways, dualities - one face looks back in time and one looks forward?”

“Very good,” Therese says back, and she hopes there isn’t an echo in her voice, hopes her brutal, brittle charm - such as it is - is up to whatever spin Jeanette’s putting on. She can feel the hand on her own shoulder, the other on her hip, moving her how she should move, feel her sister close beside her steering her in. “Do you like it?” The hunger’s purring in her now, warming her voice, and is this how Jeanette feels all the time, and is that a pulse through her as the bubble pushes through her and out into the world, pushing her out into this sweet smart small-town girl’s skin?

“It’s a little bleak,” says Rachel, “but it reminds me of something. American Gothic? Who’s the artist?”

“It was a gift, from someone who was like a father to my sister and I,” says Therese, without a trace of dishonesty, and Rachel turns her head and looks Therese in the eyes and it’s the perfect opportunity, and someone whether it’s Therese or Jeanette or the simple Beast or all of them at once takes it. She lays a finger to Rachel’s lips, and the hand on Rachel’s shoulder brushes the girl’s hair away. “Don’t ask how long I’ve had it. Please. This is already - fascinatingly difficult.”

She can see the tension in the girl’s face. The hyper-detail of her sight and hunger bring out the barest inward pull of a cheek, the inward turn of a lip, the shift of the jawline, the flick of an eyelash. Therese can read the decision being written in a dozen secret languages before Rachel’s lips purse and peck against her fingertip.

“I didn’t think - I didn’t expect this was that kind of arrangement,” Rachel says, with a hesitation that has to be studied, “but I’m not… I’m not saying no.” Her own hand moves, closes around Therese’s, and she’s so warm and so alive and without really knowing or choosing, Therese laces their fingers together and draws Rachel’s hand away, and for the first time in a hundred years and more she gives in to temptation.

It’s just a sip, just a mouthful, Therese tells herself, and her instincts just strong enough to take Rachel’s weight with the other hand and sink with her, lowering her onto the row of straight-backed old-fashioned chairs below the painting. But the sound the girl makes - faint and soft and as hungry as Therese feels right now - calls out and the flame in her blood is so much hotter like this and Therese swallows again, and again, drowning in heat and light, as the Beast calls back.


End file.
